In 3 years of the #Partnership Program the state funding of HIV programs in EECA countries increased 15-fold

The ECUO summed up the results of the regional program “Partnership for Equal Access to HIV Services in Eastern Europe and Central Asia”.

The goals established by the #Partnership organizers were generally achieved, and the regional Program itself gave impetus to further cooperation and collaboration of the country communities to advocate for the availability of HIV treatment programs in the EECA region. Project Manager Andrei Kosinov told about this, presenting the achievements of the #Partnership at the final forum of the program.

Andrei Kosinov

“Our key idea was to solve them problem together with partners rather than on our own. We worked with country teams, made plans, adopted country programs. There was a lot of paper work. We focused on the target groups to prevent dispersing our resources”, Andrei Kosinov said.

He emphasized that the feature of the program was its extensive geography, which united almost all post-Soviet republics and Poland. First of all, the organizers recorded the baseline situation as of the beginning of the project, in 2015. And before the end of the program, a repeated baseline analysis was conducted to assess the dynamics of changes.

“We had three goals, at first sight understandable, but hard to achieve”, he said. “This is, first, the expansion of access to services, and second, the transition to state financing. And the third goal is trying to move the community forward. The results were different across the tasks, but we achieved significant advantages in each of them. As a result, our main victory is a synergy of what we are doing now”.

During the three years of the program operation, state funding for HIV/AIDS programs has increased 15-fold. And despite the different approaches of the authorities of the countries of the EECA region to advocacy, it was possible to motivate the authorities to cooperation and initiatives. Governments began to be active and provide grants to public organizations.

“It is very important that local, grassroots organizations began to receive grants in their own countries. The community has learned to independently receive funding from their countries. During the period of #Partnership Program in 5 countries, 15 domestic grants were received”, he concluded.

The online platform MINUS VIRUS is established by the Eastern European and Central Asian Union of people living with HIV as part of the regional project “Partnership for equitable access to HIV care continuum in EECA” with the financial support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF).